The following “phrase history” is timely today as the phrase, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” is being used in at least two prominent instances. First, in the most recent Star Trek film and secondly (more importantly) in reference to the Obama administration supporting the arming and funding of Syrian rebels in a ground campaign against ISIS.

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The Syrian rebels are dubious, at best, and certainly anti-American. However, they have a common enemy with America–ISIS. Various mainstream TV networks have used the phrase, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” to describe the Obama administration’s willing relationship with the Syrian rebels and to discuss the wisdom of befriending the rebels–as the fictional Captain Kirk was willing to befriend Khan in his battle against their common enemy. Spock, although wrong in his understanding of the origin of the phrase, questioned Kirk’s wisdom in the same manner as TV networks are doing today.

Fact-Checking Spock: Was the “Enemy of My Enemy” Guy Really Killed by His “Friend”?

Toward the end of the latest Star Trek film, Captain James T. Kirk makes yet another in a string of bold decisions: He decides he will join forces with one of his enemies to fight another even more dangerous enemy, rationalizing his decision with the axiom that “the enemy of my enemy is friend.” Spock, as ever, is more skeptical, and warns Kirk that this saying was an Arab proverb coined by a prince who was soon decapitated by his “friend.” It’s one of the movie’s better laugh lines—but is it right? Or has Spock’s Vulcan memory somehow failed him?

This statement must have been made by his human half. The decades-spanning, cross-cultural history of the proverb is a little murky, but, unless our understanding of history changes between now and the year 2259, Spock’s story appears to have no basis in historical fact: The adage doesn’t appear to have originated with an Arab, nor a prince, nor a man who lost his head.

From there, the axiom may have entered English through French. As Garson O’Toole, the self-styled Quote Investigator, pointed out to me, the expression “every enemy’s enemy is a friend” was described as a “popular” line of reasoning in an 1825 English translation of a French book, History of the Conquest of England by the Normans. The adage took on the more familiar English phrasing, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” by the late 19th century. The first recorded instance for this phrasing comes from Gabriel Manigault, who in his 1884 Political Creed described the sense that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” as a “natural feeling.”